Gosset earned a degree in chemistry at Oxford,
and joined the Guinness brewery firm in 1899. His work for Guinness led
him investigate the statistical validity of results obtained from small
samples (previous statistical theory had concentrated instead on large samples).
He took a leave of absence to spend 1906/1907 studying under Karl Pearson
at University College, London. His publications in Pearson's journal Biometrika
were signed "Student," not because of a Guinness company policy forbidding
publication, as is often said, but more precisely because of a company wish
to keep secret the fact that they were gaining an industrial advantage from
employing statisticians. Gosset's most important result is known as the
"Student's t" test or distribution, published in 1908. In these pages, we
will drop the subterfuge and restore the discoverer's name to the discovery.
We will call it "Gosset's t."

His work founded
the concept of quality control, which Neyman and others were later to develop
more fully. In studying the distribution of yeast cells, he independently
discovered the Poisson Distribution, and demonstrated
its utility in biological applications.

Gosset remained in contact
with the Pearson group for the rest of his life. He was on the scene in
the 1930's when Jerzy Neyman and Karl's son Egon Pearson were collaborating
in London on their new theory of hypothesis testing, a collaboration which
had begun in 1928 in Paris, when Pearson had interested Neyman in the problem
of providing a proper mathematical basis for Gosset's t function. (That
particular problem would be solved only later, by a student who learned
of it in one of Neyman's lectures at Berkeley). Gosset was for long
the only figure on friendly terms with both Pearson and Fisher, whose acrimonious
and enduring hostility is one of the epic themes in statistics. W E Deming,
of the U S Department of Agriculture, was at University College
in this period, and described the scene in a letter written at the time:

"Karl
Pearson and R A Fisher disagree almost to the point of taking up arms
on some questions in statistics. K Pearson has no use for Student, either.
Student and R A Fisher stand together. Fisher can say nothing good of
Neyman and Pearson. I have heard from all sources that Egon Pearson is really
a prince of a fellow."

Florence Nightingale David had been working
with Karl Pearson at the time, and later described the complex interrelationships
to Constance Reid this way:

I
saw the lot of them. Went flyfishing with Gosset. A nice man. Went to Fisher's
seminars with Cochran and that gang. Endured K P. Spent three years with Neyman.
Then I was on Egon Pearson's faculty for years.

Fisher
was very vague. Karl Pearson was vague. Egon Pearson vague. Neyman vague. Fisher
and Neyman were fiery. Silly! Egon Pearson was on the outside.

They
were all jealous of one another, afraid somebody would get ahead. Gosset didn't
have a jealous bone in his body. He asked the question. Egon Pearson to a certain
extent rephrased the question which Gosset had asked in statistical parlance.
Neyman solved the problem mathematically.

The
English intellectual scene is isolated in many ways, and highly contentious when
not isolated. But somewhere in that mix of provinciality and acrimony, the right
distance between contributors is sometimes achieved. The decade of the 1930's
in the group around and against Karl Pearson seems to have been one of those productive
moments. Some statistician should calculate the optimum distances and temperatures
involved.

Deming, who had met Gosset at a meeting
of the Royal Statistical Society, described him as "with a beard, very humble
and of pleasing personality." Visually, however, he was a great disappointment
to those who had wondered what he looked like: "Not very interesting after you
find him."

Gosset died unexpectedly
on 16 October 1937. Among the group, his loss was felt most keenly by Egon Pearson,
who remarked perceptively:

"I
think that there are so very many things that we owe to "Student" in the present
statistical world. I would like to interest people in him, his practical mindedness
and his simplicity of approach. It would be so easy for people to miss in the
picture that large part he played simply by being in touch, by correspondence
or personal meetings, with all the mathematical statisticians of his day."

We
might hazard the guess that the generously connective Gosset was, in part the
catalyst, but perhaps more generally the communicating medium, of the great
statistical surge of the English 1930's.